The New Age of Financial Exploitation

With the rise of seemingly accessible financial education via social media, now more than ever we feel empowered to cultivate wealth and break the economic boundaries generationally destined to us. For hours on end we doom scroll past titles reading “What Finance Bros Have Been Gate Keeping From Us” and “How to Transform Your Wealth Overnight.” While several online educators use their public platforms to provide easily accessible information to people far and wide, there are always two sides to a coin. From onwards of 2020, financial exploitation has been increasingly easier to get away with under the guise of large followings, strategic tips, and must have online courses. These opportunists capitalize on media illiteracy and those new into the business/ investing scene, setting the stage for contemporary forms of oppression that can last generations to come.  

Financial Fear Mongering and The Digital Age

The key way scammers hook vulnerable individuals into purchasing their hollow courses is through fear. Throughout their free content, many will feed subtle but scary messages about the current state of the economy without regard to actual facts to back their claims.

 Examples of popular titles on For You pages across Instagram, Tik Tok, and Facebook include “If you don’t own assets, you’ll be priced out forever” and “The middle class is disappearing.” What is noticeable about these titles is that none of them are fully incorrect, which is why they work: what is partially true masks the larger uncertainty around the statement.  

Furthermore, these ideas are typically pushed through short form content, causing viewers to blindly believe what is presented as they can’t be bothered to take the extra time to do their own research. Thus, people start growing a subconscious state of panic which intensifies the more content they consume. As underlying tension boils over, many give in to the anxiety of being left behind in a quickly changing financial world, ultimately purchasing lackluster courses created by the very content creators who manifested the anxiety in the first place.

Media Literacy- The Real Divide

When looking at the bigger picture, the gap in media literacy directly correlates to new age financial oppression.The new line isn’t between people who know finance and those who don’t, It’s between people who can resist taking information at face value, spot false promises, and understand how social media and online algorithms work. Those who lack these qualities not only put themselves at risk of scams, but risk generations of their family ending up in new age cyclical poverty due to one bad decision. Thus, it is important that if we want to address financial exploitation at its root we must combat media illiteracy first.